iPhone app fact-checks attack ads

A classroom assignment might change the way voters consume political attack ads.

Out today, the Super PAC App for the iPhone has already climbed to No. 4 on iTunes’ list of most-downloaded free news applications — thanks partly to publicity from the likes of CNN and Mediaite, but perhaps also because co-creators Jennifer Hollett and Dan Siegel have invented a unique way for voters to keep candidates and super PACs honest.

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It works not unlike Shazam: The app identifies a political TV ad by its audio, then uses PolitiFact, FactCheck.org and other sources to track the ad’s truthfulness and funding sources. Funded by a $240,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, the app is free to download, doesn’t contain ads and, its creators insist, nonpartisan.

Hollett, 36, and Siegel, 28, met last February in a graduate class on social television at the MIT Media Lab. Hollett had a broadcast journalism background and Siegel a business background. Both interested in politics, they were paired on an assignment to create a way for television viewers to engage with social media. The result, the Super PAC App, caught the Knight Foundation’s attention.

“With TV advertising consuming a significant amount of the resources we spend on selecting our leaders, it’s important to the future of our democracy that Americans can transparently view who funds these messages,” Michael Maness, vice president for journalism and media innovation at Knight Foundation, said in a statement.

And that’s exactly what Hollett and Siegel have done.

“It’s not impossible to find out information” about political ads, Siegel said, but it’s like “having three hours of homework every night, and who wants to do that?”

Siegel and Hollett do. They said they were up until 4 a.m. watching ads at MIT. Together, they’ve watched more than 320 presidential campaign ads from this cycle alone, using fact-checking sites to aggregate each ad’s claims and funding sources.

“The low hanging fruit for social television is Twitter and TV. But we’re wondering what’s really possible when you combine social media with television,” Hollett said. “We’re just getting started.”